When Terror Came to Canada

“That first surge of 1,200 provincial and Montreal city police dragged 238 suspects into custody within the first eight hours of the act’s proclamation. Nearly 500 were swept into detention and 4,600 searches were conducted for weapons and subversive materials in the weeks before authorities finally conceded an armed insurrection in Quebec was, in fact, unlikely. The dragnet, along with the dispatch of 10,000 combat-equipped troops to help guard Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa, remains one of the most controversial moments in modern Canadian ­history.”

Brian Stewart – Literary Review of Canada – January 2019

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Food Insecurity Is Our New National Crisis

“Across the hall is the Trading Post, a small room stocked with packaged foods clients have received from their local food bank but that they can’t, or don’t, use: cans of Campbell’s soup, Aylmer diced tomatoes, Heinz baked beans, and Zoodles line the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Not all of it is nutritious. Everyone understands that. But it’s something. And when you have a community to feed, you do what you can. The predicament weighs on the centre’s hands-on, energetic executive director, Donna Sutton. ‘People come in the morning for a bagel and coffee,’ Sutton says. ‘They come back in the afternoon for a muffin. That’s breakfast and lunch. Then they just have to worry about dinner.’ With meager earnings and no access to credit, many of Sutton’s clients are facing cold truths.”

Raizel Robin – The Walrus – March 2019

Nuclear Winter

“Spinning out of control, the satellite came to its journey’s fiery end in January 1978, just four months after its launch. After weeks in a decaying orbit, it re-entered the atmosphere near Haida Gwaii, then known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Soviets had intended, in such a scenario, for the reactor onboard to disengage from the satellite’s body and safely burn up seperately. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the remains of Cosmos 954 streaked across northern Canada and the reactor broke apart, spilling its radioactive contents into the air.”

Lorcan Archer – Maisonneuve – January 2019

https://maisonneuve.org/article/2019/01/29/nuclear-winter/

Joe And Mariya In The Promised Land

“But Joe Jarusewich, who lived like one of them, had a wife he hadn’t seen since 1930. Except for a 10-year span when they lost track of one another, they had written to each other twice a month throughout that time Joe told me once that Mariya’s letters always ended with the plea: ‘Take me Take me. I want to have more than one day with you before I die.’ And now, it seemed, the wish was to be granted. When we arrived at Dore Lake, the long process of getting Mariya to Canada had begun.”

Pamela Andres – Maclean’s – March 1970

Talking to My Family About Race

“In high school, I realized being biracial was incredibly complicated. I had trouble making Black or South Asian friends—kids from both groups too puzzled by my ethnicities to know how to approach me. It was then that I noticed I looked different from the rest of my family—much to the surprise of my mother and grandfather, who were oblivious to the stark difference in our physical traits. The rest of my family never seemed to notice my difference either.”

Eternity Martis – The Walrus – February 2019

Gerald Butts: The BFF in the PMO

“But the story Mr. Butts is trying to craft with Mr. Trudeau is more ambitious, abstract and romantic. Maybe Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Butts cooked it up back when they first became friends, as some suspect; probably it evolved over time. These are people who love the idea of big national projects, and who want to leverage Mr. Trudeau’s charisma to build a new global image and self-identity for the country.”

Adam Radwanski – The Globe and Mail – September 2016

How can Canada’s North get off diesel?

“They power every off-grid community in Nunavut, Nunavik, the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Labrador without exception — and most northern communities are off-grid. Diesel generators even keep the lights on in some of the larger centres, such as Iqaluit. Some communities have supplemented diesel with alternatives such as solar or wind, and others have plans to do so, but the pattern remains: up here, diesel is king.”

Jimmy Thomson – The Narwhal – February 2019